This Memorial Day afternoon Cindy Lou and I trekked over to the National Cemetery at the Veterans Administration in Dayton to visit with her buried father and place an American flag at his headstone. It just seemed like the right thing to do. I stopped by my father’s place at Calvary Cemetery late last week to place a World War II marker with a flag at his place. I was too late, though. One of my sibs beat me to it. Thanks to whoever that was.
Yesterday at the National Cemetery was particularly special because lots of folks were there to appreciate the place dressed up for the patriotic occasion. Every grave on the property had a flag already in place which, according to the newspaper, totaled 46,000 Old Glories. Impressive, indeed. And to make the grounds even more lovely, larger American flags mounted on poles were erected every 50 feet or so along both sides of every road in the cemetery.
It is duly important to remember our fathers and mothers and friends who served our nation on Memorial Day. It is good to remember all our dead, to be sure, but especially those who gave up a chunk of their lives for lousy pay and a dangerous gig to keep all of us at home safe and able to practice a life with the freedoms we have come to expect.
I was lucky not to have to serve in the military. I’m sure that sounds self-serving, and I guess it is. It’s not that I didn’t want to serve when my time came. Dad told plenty of stories that made me proud of his service, and hailing from the Birthplace of Aviation, I suppose in different circumstances, I would have been damned excited to do time with the United States Air Force. It’s just that for me the Vietnam war was going on, and by the time I signed up for my draft card, I had a very bad feeling about that conflict. Instead, I went to college and got my degree and went on to serve my time as a public school educator. I’ve always hoped my dad understood.
I write this today because it is, indeed, important to remember our veterans and celebrate their sacrifice. But something else happened at the National Cemetery yesterday that moved me deeply.
As we pulled up to the corner of Kansas and Texas avenues, which is where we park to visit Cindy’s dad, I noticed a guy, probably about my age, standing back on the other side of the street taking a picture. If I had kept going, my car very easily could have screwed up his photograph. So we waited.
He took a long time composing a seemingly easy landscape shot, but no problem. We weren’t in any big hurry. He didn’t even seem to notice us. When he finished, we pulled around the corner, parked, and then walked up under the big spruce tree that provides the former First Lieutenant Ralph Thomas Cooke with shade on a sunny day.
A young woman was standing there under the tree, talking with an older man not far from where Cindy’s dad is interred. They were not distracted by our searching for the right headstone, as they were deep in storytelling about the one fallen and buried there. Cindy placed a second flag at her dad’s place and stood there a while in thought. After a couple of minutes, she was ready to leave.
On the short walk back to the car, I felt odd walking over the headstones of fallen soldiers. As soon as we reached a wider easement between the stones, we followed it to stay out of other’s sacred space.
Just as we got to the road, I noticed the guy who had taken the landscape shot of the headstones a few minutes earlier. He was hovering over a marker with a few keepsakes, trying to take a close-up shot. As I often do when I notice a person taking a picture he or she should be in, too, I walked over and asked if I could take a picture with him in the shot. He was grateful.
He smiled at me a bit sheepishly when I recognized one of the memory pieces he brought to his dad’s grave site was roll of toilet paper inscribed with ‘RIP.‘ He grinned and said his father had died on the toilet and that he would appreciate the tp since he always had such a great sense of humor. We both laughed easily.
The guy hunched down over his father’s stone and I snapped off a couple of quick pics for him. I couldn’t tell what his expression was since the sun was so bright. I could hardly make out anything in the viewfinder. But I could tell the shot was pretty balanced and knew whatever I got would be okay.
When the man approached to reclaim his camera, he gave me the biggest bearhug I’ve had in a while. I never got his name. I never got his father’s name. All I know is he was grateful to be there with his dad and pleased that he had a picture of it. He gave Cindy a big hug, too.
I’ve been through many Memorial Days in my 61 years. I’ve listened to plenty of Indianapolis 500s on the radio as a kid on family picnics at Lake Loramie or at a cookout in our family’s backyard. But this year I got a hug from a very moved stranger I’ll never see again, coming from however far away to be at his father’s grave site on Memorial Day. It’s a memory I’ll treasure for as long as I can.
Today’s elder idea: There are those, I know, who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American dream.
American poet Archibald MacLeish
image: Monument at Dayton’s National Cemetery
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